Top News - WebProNewshttp://www.webpronews.com
The top news headlines in Internet business from WebProNews.Tue, 03 Mar 2015 20:11:58 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1http://webpronews.comhttp://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/WebProNews_106.gifWebProNewsSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with FeedLoungeSubscribe with The Free DictionarySubscribe with Bitty BrowserSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Excite MIXSubscribe with Yourminis.comSubscribe with Attensa for OutlookSubscribe with WebwagSubscribe with netomat HubSubscribe with Daily RotationSubscribe with Podcast ReadySubscribe with FlurrySubscribe with ParticlsAdd to Any Feed ReaderSubscribe with fwickiCommunity Season 6 Trailer Previews the ‘Age of Yahoo’http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/vpGBhqy9B6w/community-season-6-trailer-previews-the-age-of-yahoo-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/community-season-6-trailer-previews-the-age-of-yahoo-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 20:11:58 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418920You first look at the new season of Community has finally arrived in the form of a three minute-long Avengers-themed trailer.

Check it out:

After five seasons, Community got the ax from NBC but the show’s ardent following demanded a revival. Apparently, there was enough buzz to make it happen. At the time there were a few options for where season six, should it ever happen, could land – but in the end it went to Yahoo Screen.

“I am very pleased that Community will be returning for its predestined sixth season on Yahoo,” said Community creator Dan Harmon when the season was announced. “I look forward to bringing our beloved NBC sitcom to a larger audience by moving it online. I vow to dominate our new competition. Rest easy, Big Bang Theory. Look out, Bang Bus!”

The new season of Community will premiere on March 17 with two new episodes. You’re not going to get a full Netflix-style bing platter, however. Each new episode will debut every Tuesday after that. There will be 13 episodes in all.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/community-season-6-trailer-previews-the-age-of-yahoo-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/community-season-6-trailer-previews-the-age-of-yahoo-2015-03Twitter Digits Can Now Help You Personalize Your App, Make It More Securehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/8Ft4VdXCvzk/twitter-digits-can-now-help-you-personalize-your-app-make-it-more-secure-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/twitter-digits-can-now-help-you-personalize-your-app-make-it-more-secure-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 19:40:28 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418918Twitter announced friend-finding and two-step verification for Digits, its sign-in tool for developers.

Twitter launched its new mobile app development platform called Fabric in October. It’s made up of three modular kits, including a Twitter kit, which includes Digits. Digits allows people to sign into apps using their phone number. As the company explained at the time:

It’s built on Twitter infrastructure so you don’t have to worry about managing multiple relationships with carriers and SMS interchanges. Digits is fully themeable so that it fits the user experience you’ve designed for your app. Digits won’t post anything on your user’s behalf since it isn’t tied to their social network accounts, including Twitter. And with Digits, your apps are ready for global adoption: it’s available immediately in 216 countries and in 28 languages, on iOS, Android and the web.

Digits also solves a number of issues for your users. Since Digits uses a phone number, there’s no need for users to remember complex passwords or usernames and all they have to share is a phone number to get started in your app.

The latest features will make it a more attractive sign-in option since they provide added security and the ability to make an app more personally relevant to the user.

“Since every app is different, many of them need their own social graphs to provide a differentiated experience to win users over,” says Twitter engineer Eric Frohnhoefer . “While social networking services give you the full list of your users’ friends, those connections may not be up to date or relevant to the app experience you’re delivering. On the other hand, contact lists on your users’ phones have the strongest, most current connections – but it can be cumbersome to build custom code to import those lists and match the contacts to create a social graph.”

Friend-finding in Digits is the solution as far as Twitter is concerned. It enables apps to create social graphs with users’ contact lists. It will match both mutual and one-way connections so users who are already on the service will know which of their contacts are also using it. They can also be alerted when a friend joins at a later time.

As Twitter notes, you can use contacts gained from the feature to personalize content with the app. For example, you could show users what their friends have bought or “the highest level they’ve achieved to incite ‘friendly’ competition”.

“By delivering an experience fit for the individual user, you can increase the adoption of your app and retention among your user base,” says Frohnhoefer. “New users will know immediately which of the people they know best are using your app and current users can be ambassadors for the new initiates. It’s worth noting too that the social graph users create in your app with Digits will not be shared with other third-party apps, and the service is opt-in for users – it won’t interrupt the simple sign-up Digits offers.”

As far as security goes, Twitter says phone-based login is already more secure than email or social-based login, but the two-step verification just adds another layer. Once you implement the verification, your app’s users can login to Digits, and set up a code, which will be prompted on future logins and signups.

Developers can get Digits at get.fabric.io, downloading Fabric, and installing the Twitter Kit. Android documentation for the new features can be found here. iOS documentation is here.

Twitter is currently in the middle of a series of developer events, which are taking place around the world. The next one is on March 11 in New York. more on those here.

Images via Twitter

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/twitter-digits-can-now-help-you-personalize-your-app-make-it-more-secure-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/twitter-digits-can-now-help-you-personalize-your-app-make-it-more-secure-2015-03Nicole Scherzinger, Lewis Hamilton: No More Communicationhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/zpeLueCz9TQ/nicole-scherzinger-lewis-hamilton-no-more-communication-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/nicole-scherzinger-lewis-hamilton-no-more-communication-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 19:02:09 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418917Nicole Scherzinger and Lewis Hamilton broke up last month, but remained amicable and kept in touch with one another–until now. It seems Scherzinger’s friends convinced her it’s unhealthy to have such close ties with one’s ex, so Nicole and the Formula One racing driver are no longer communicating at all.

“I’m devastated that it didn’t work out. It was the hardest decision we had to make, but we made it together,” Nicole Scherzinger said at the time of the break-up.

“The split has been devastating for Nicole. She feels the only way she can move on is by putting distance between her and Lewis,” a source tells Yahoo NZ. “While their split was amicable, she and those around her feel it’s not healthy for them to remain friends.”

The former Pussycat Dolls singer has been working hard to distract herself from her broken heart.

“Nicole has been throwing herself into work, and having these trips in place has meant that she has been getting physical distance from the whole situation,” the source adds.

Right after Nicole Scherzinger and Lewis Hamilton split, she headed to India to perform at a wedding–for big bucks. She is in Venice now on business, but is making a bit of time to enjoy the beautiful city.

What do you think about Nicole Scherzinger being told by her friends to cut all communications with Lewis Hamilton? They likely are looking out for her best interests, since she and Hamilton have broken up and gotten back together about five times now.

Do you think this will be the final end-all split for Lewis Hamilton and Nicole Scherzinger? Is she in a better place now so she might eventually move on with someone new?

“I was surprised when I first learned this about Snowden–that he enlisted in the US Army in 2004. He wanted to go fight in Iraq, but during basic training at Fort Benning, he broke both of his legs and received an administrative discharge. After that, he was still determined to serve his country (love him or hate him, you gotta admit the guy’s strong-willed) and so he ended up getting a job at the CIA, which is where his career in Intelligence began,” said Gordon-Levitt.

“Today’s scenes felt like a really good way to start this shoot. It was hard, but of course, nowhere near as hard as real basic training. And me, I’m just honored and excited to be doing a soldier sequence with Oliver. I keep saying to myself: ‘fuck, this guy directed Platoon!’”

Gordon-Levitt leads a star-studded cast, including Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Rhys Ifans, Timothy Olyphant, and last but certainly not least, Nicolas Cage. The movie is based on two different books, to which Stone acquired the rights – The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, by journalist Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus, by Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.

Open Road Films just announced the film’s release date last week – Christmas, 2015.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/heres-joseph-gordon-levitt-as-edward-snowden-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/heres-joseph-gordon-levitt-as-edward-snowden-2015-03HBO GO Comes to the PS4, Finallyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/uUyeql2tOe4/hbo-go-comes-to-the-ps4-finally-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/hbo-go-comes-to-the-ps4-finally-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 18:32:15 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418911]]>Almost a year to the day after HBO GO came to the PS3, it’s finally coming to the PS4.

It wasn’t already on there, you ask. No. No, it wasn’t.

HBO GO is notoriously slow to arrive on new consoles and other streaming hardware. It didn’t launch on the Xbox One until November of last year.

And it didn’t land on Amazon’s Fire TV until last December, nearly eight months after the device’s launch.

“The app functions just like the PS3 version. After you authenticate your PS4 with your current cable/satellite service through HBOGO.com/activate, you’ll be able to watch every episode of every season of HBO’s best shows, including True Detective, Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones,” says Phil Rosenberg on the Playstation blog.

The HBO GO app will be available to download at some point today, March 3. Happy GoT‘ing, everyone.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/hbo-go-comes-to-the-ps4-finally-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/hbo-go-comes-to-the-ps4-finally-2015-03Carrie Underwood Welcomes A Baby Boyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/ocXvxE3ytvE/carrie-underwood-welcomes-a-baby-boy-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/carrie-underwood-welcomes-a-baby-boy-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 17:49:54 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418908Carrie Underwood announced this week that she gave birth to a healthy baby boy on February 27 and shared a sweet photo on Instagram.

The country star and husband Mike Fisher named their boy Isaiah Michael; unlike many stars, Underwood announced the sex of her baby to the world well before he was born, although she did it in a very unusual way: through her Country Music Awards co-host, Brad Paisley. Fans thought that Paisley let it slip during the show that she was having a baby boy, but she says she planned for the whole thing. She did, however, wait until the last minute to share the news with him.

“Brad’s got loose lips. He’s a blabbermouth! So, I was like, ‘I’m not gonna tell you until we’re ready for the rest of the world to know, ’cause I know you’ll tell people,’” Underwood said.

Underwood talked a bit about becoming a mother on the Today show last year, saying the prospect of being parents was something that she and Fisher were having trouble wrapping their minds around.

“It’s still kind of weird to be honest. Sometimes I’ll be with my husband and I’ll be like, ‘I’m going to be a mom and you’re going to be a dad. Is this real life?’ But we’re really excited,” Carrie said.

Isaiah is the first child for Underwood and Fisher, who married in 2010.

Underwood said that when she and her husband found out the sex of the baby, it didn’t come as much of a surprise; they already knew in their hearts what the baby would be.

“[It was] just the two of us in a nicer setting, but we both knew. So, that was just confirming our suspicions. We didn’t really speak of it before because we were both just like, ‘Whatever. It’s all good.’ But we knew it was a boy,” Carrie Underwood said.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/carrie-underwood-welcomes-a-baby-boy-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/carrie-underwood-welcomes-a-baby-boy-2015-03How To Set Up App Indexing For Ranking In Googlehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/zkZ0wA4u8v4/how-to-set-up-app-indexing-for-ranking-in-google-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/how-to-set-up-app-indexing-for-ranking-in-google-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 17:02:38 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418899Last week, Google made two announcements about how it will rank search results on mobile devices going forward. The one that has received the greatest amount of attention is the inclusion of a mobile-friendly ranking signal, which will go into effect beginning April 21. This gives sites time to make sure their sites meet Googles criteria for being mobile-friendly, and to avoid a potential rankings hit. More on how to make your site more mobile-friendly here.

The other announcement was that Google is now using information from indexed apps as a ranking factor for signed-in users who have the app installed. That’s already in effect.

Google said that as a result of this particular factor, it may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.

Google first began testing app indexing in the fall of 2013. Googlebot began indexing content in Android apps, and gave webmasters the ability to let Google know which app they’d like Google to index through their existing sitemaps file and through Webmaster tools.

As the company explained at the time:

“Searchers on smartphones experience many speed bumps that can slow them down. For example, any time they need to change context from a web page to an app, or vice versa, users are likely to encounter redirects, pop-up dialogs, and extra swipes and taps. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could give your users the choice of viewing your content either on the website or via your app, both straight from Google’s search results?”

“If both the webpage and the app contents are successfully indexed, Google will then try to show deep links to your app straight in our search results when we think they’re relevant for the user’s query and if the user has the app installed. When users tap on these deep links, your app will launch and take them directly to the content they need.”

Google said back then that app indexing would not impact ranking. Now it does.

They also made it available globally in English. The following month, they made it available in more languages. At Google I/O last year, they announced a slew of additional apps, and opened app indexing up to all Android developers. If you have an Android app, you can participate. At the time, they also made some design tweaks to how apps appear.

Also at Google I/O, the company held a session called “The Future of Apps and Search,” which discussed bringing search and apps together to give users a better experience. In light of the ranking news, you might want to give that a watch if you don’t already have app indexing implemented.

Here’s a much shorter overview on getting your app in the Google index:

In December, Google said clicks on app deep links jumped by 10x the prior quarter, with 15% of signed-in Google searches on Android now returning deep links. These numbers have likely only increased since then.

There are four basic steps for enabling users who have your app installed to open your content within the app from Google search results: add deep link support, verify your app’s official site on the Google Play Console, provide deep links, and check for errors in Webmaster Tools, so you can fix them.

You can find the documentation for adding deep linking support here. You have to specify intent filters in your app manifest that define how to reach specific content inside your app. Google walks you through this process in that link.

You’ll then want to test your deep links using the Android Debug Bridge, which is a command line tool that lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device.

You’ll also want to restrict access to parts of your app content. This involves including a noindex.xml file in your app to indicate which deep links shouldn’t be indexed. You’ll be able to specify a list of URIs to exclude, or a list of URI prefixes. As Google notes, it’s similar to how the robots noindex meta tag works for websites.

After you’ve added support, you’ll need to verify your website. Sign in to your Google Play Developer Console, click All Applications, select the app you want to verify, and select Services & APIs from the left menu. Under “App Indexing from Gogole Search,” cliick “Verify website.” Type your web address, and click “Verify”. Then, go to Webmaster Tools (requires “owner” permissions), and click “All Messages” from the left menu. Open the verification request message, approve it, and then your app will appear on the Associates page of your WMT account. You can then provide deep links for each web page that has a corresponding deep link.

After verification, you’ll want to provide deep links for each page that has a corresponding deep link either on each page of your site or in your sitemaps. You can ffind documentation on this here.

When adding deep links to your sitemap or webiste, Google says they should only be included for canonical web URLs, and to remember to specify an app deep link for your homepage. Not all website URLs in a sitemap need to have a corresponding app deep link, don’t include them for those that aren’t supported by your app. News sites using News Sitemaps should include deep link annotations in them as well as in general sitemaps. Google also says not to provide annotations for deep links that execute native ARM code. This enables app indexing to work for all platforms, it says.

“When Google indexes content from your app, your app will need to make HTTP requests that it usually makes under normal operation,” Google’s Michael Xu said in a blog post last April. “These requests will appear to your servers as originating from Googlebot. Therefore, your server’s robots.txt file must be configured properly to allow these requests. Finally, please make sure the back button behavior of your app leads directly back to the search results page.”

Information related to app indexing that Google shows in Webmaster Tools includes: errors in indexed pages within apps, weekly clicks and impressions from app deep links via Google search; and stats on your sitemap (if that’s how you implemented the app deep links). Google says it will be adding a lot more.

There are two new ways to track performance for your app deep links. Google will send a weekly clicks and impressions update to the Message center in in WMT, and you can now track how much traffic app deep links drive to your app using referrer information (referrer extra in the ACTION_VIEW intent). The company said in December it was working to integrate this info with Google Analytics.

“Blocked resources are one of the top reasons for the ‘content mismatch’ errors you see in Webmaster Tools’ Crawl Errors report,” said Google Webmaster Trends analyst Mariya Moeva. “We need access to all the resources necessary to render your app page. This allows us to assess whether your associated web page has the same content as your app page.”

“To help you identify errors when indexing your app, we’ll send you messages for all app errors we detect, and will also display most of them in the ‘Android apps’ tab of the Crawl errors report,” Moeva said.

At the time, Google announced three new error types that go along with the existing “content mismatch” and “intent URI not supported” error alerts: APK not found, no first-click free, and back button violation.

Apps with or without corresponding webpages can use the App Indexing API to notify Google of their deep links. Documentation for this is available here.

There’s also an app indexing checklist here. Additionally, you may want to peruse the FAQ.

For now, Google only supports Android apps for app indexing. While it’s missing a huge chunk of popular apps by not supporting iOS, Android does dominate smart device operating system market share, mainly due to its wide use across a plethora of devices. According to new research from ABI, Android holds 53% of that market share.

In other words, that’s a lot of potential visibility for app content in Google search results. It’s also possible that Google will eventually support iOS apps.

“You’d have to imagine Google will bring support, despite Apple not probably making it easy, to iOS devices,” wrote Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz in December, as he pointed to a hint that Google may do just that.

It’s not a major hint, but a Googler responded to a question in a Webmaster Help forum thread, saying, “app indexing is supported only for Android for now. Stay tuned for updates (:”

Beyond making the content from existing Android apps more visible with its new ranking signal, it’s likely that the move will inspire more companies to create Android apps in the first place.

Last week, Google announced the launch of paid search results in Google Play, which will also help app makers gain more exposure. This is only in the pilot stage for now, but will likely become a major feature available to Android users and advertisers.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/how-to-set-up-app-indexing-for-ranking-in-google-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/how-to-set-up-app-indexing-for-ranking-in-google-2015-03Waze Adds AMBER Alertshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/fCR35zpNanI/waze-adds-amber-alerts-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/waze-adds-amber-alerts-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 16:58:06 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418906Thanks to a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Google-owned Waze traffic app will now feature AMBER alerts.

“As of this writing, AMBER alerts have helped safely recover 728 children. We are proud to help expand the AMBER alerts program’s reach and eager to see the benefit Wazers can provide in making communities safer places,” says Waze in a blog post.

Waze’s AMBER alerts will only be shown to Waze users in the appropriate geographic area, and only if their car has been stopped for at least 10 seconds. Each AMBER alert will only appear once per week. Also, alerts will disappear when Waze users tap the map or once their vehicle starts moving.

Waze will look for new AMBER alerts every 10 minutes.

“Waze has always been about sharing information for the common good. In this spirit we hope the addition of AMBER alerts to Waze will make a significant contribution to safety and awareness for children and parents across communities everywhere.”

As you may recall, Waze has been in the news the past few months for drawing the ire of many a law enforcement group. Some groups have claimed that a feature of Waze that allows users to pinpoint the location of police officers on a map endangers lives. The same organizations then admitted that their anger was kind of about declining speeding ticket revenues, and some police forces have been flooding Waze with fake info in the hopes of rendering it useless.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/waze-adds-amber-alerts-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/waze-adds-amber-alerts-2015-03Patton Oswalt Makes Compelling Argument for Never Going Outside Ever Againhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/7l4Hgd4-AUg/patton-oswalt-makes-compelling-argument-for-never-going-outside-ever-again-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/patton-oswalt-makes-compelling-argument-for-never-going-outside-ever-again-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 16:17:04 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418902Patton Oswalt thinks that television is in its “American cinema in the early 70s” phase, and that’s reason enough to stay glued to your TV and never go out in the sun ever again.

Oswalt went on a predictably brilliant Twitter rant about how damn good TV is right now. It’ll make you want to skip work, go home, turn off all the lights, and catch up on the dozens of great shows you’ve been meaning to watch. Trust me.

I know I'm supposed to embrace life & go outside & sunshine & I'll be dead someday but fuck TV is SO GOOD right now. It really is.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/patton-oswalt-makes-compelling-argument-for-never-going-outside-ever-again-2015-03/feed0http://www.webpronews.com/patton-oswalt-makes-compelling-argument-for-never-going-outside-ever-again-2015-03Julianne Hough To Do Summer Dance Tour With Her Brotherhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsTopNewsRssFeed/~3/dW2QmlK1DXA/julianne-hough-to-do-summer-dance-tour-with-her-brother-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/julianne-hough-to-do-summer-dance-tour-with-her-brother-2015-03#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 16:16:33 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=418903Julianne Hough and her brother Derek toured the U.S. last year with what they call a “rock concert for dance”, and the duo announced on Good Morning America this week that they want to do it again.

The tour was hugely successful, spread out over 40 cities last summer. This time around, the Move Live On Tour will give fans an even bigger show, which kicks off in June.

“Last year we said it was a rock concert for dance and this year it’s going to just be a bigger rock concert for dance. Our whole goal behind it is that the way that you move directly affects the way that you feel, so we get out in the audience,” Julianne Hough said. “We bring people up on stage. We’re singing. We’re dancing. We’re doing funny skits and competition and that whole thing,” she said.

The Hough siblings have had a successful career on the hit show Dancing With The Stars, which Julianne returned to for the most recent season as a judge rather than a dancer. She mentioned the dance tour late last year in a statement about her new role on the show.

“I’ve always aspired to be an all-around entertainer, whether I’m acting, dancing or singing, and I’m thrilled for this opportunity that will allow me to continue all of those pursuits. Derek and I just finished our Move Live on Tour, which reminded me how much I miss the interaction with the dance fans that have been so supportive of me in my career. I am warming up the paddles and the sass, and I’m ready to have fun in this new role,” Hough said.

Hough recently signed on to play Sandy in a live version of Grease, which will air on Fox next year. The dancer says she’s excited about the role, but is understandably nervous.

“That is a huge dream come true and also very nerve-wracking. I’m excited.”